Three years ago, Google made one more push to crack the social media space with the launch of Google+. While Google+ has now evolved from a mere social network, the ridiculous rules have, however, taken a lot of beating over the time. One of them was the real-name restrictions on its Google+ network. But Google has dropped the rule now and the company has apologized for the “unnecessarily difficult experiences” the rules had created.

When Google+ launched, the network had made it compulsory that users sign up with their real identities. Google first started rolling back on the whole real name requirement in January of 2012, opening up the rules to include maiden names and select nicknames. But even then, your original real name was displayed alongside your chosen name. If you tried to pick something Google didn’t like then you had a problem.

Over time, those restrictions were lessened, first for Pages and then for YouTube users. Now, anyone can choose to use a pseudonym on Google+.

Google+ which is no more a social network but adds a social layer across all of Google’s products, according to Google, has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Google+ chief Vic Gundotra left the firm with rising speculations on Google killing the network like it finally did to Orkut.

However, co-founder Larry Page promised to “continue working hard to build great new experiences” for Google+ fans. But then there hasn’t been any major update by Google for the network to pull crowds which are either active on Facebook or on messaging apps.

Interestingly Google+ has languished in the recent months but the popularity of the network in India has a different story to tell. The recent report from We Are Social states that when it comes to social media in India, Facebook rules followed by Google+ with 35% of internet users claiming to have signed in at least once in the past 30 days.